Mesa 400+ and WarwickThumb eq settings

I was just curious what settings any other players out there run there 400+ with a warwick thumb. Settings on there head and settings with there pups. I always just ran my pickups flat and adjusted the head. I am running this with a swr 4-10 cab and a mesa 15. I have been fiddliing around and still have not yet been satisfied, but I know this head sounds better than I have came up with. Any suggestions on a good starting point.

I dont think I can offer much help on this but... how is that Mesa/SWR cab combination working out?

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The mesa and swr seem to mesh pretty good. The swr Iv'e had for sometime now and it does not sound as good as the mesa. The mesa was a recent purchase. I have really pushed the swr cab to its limits on too many ocassions. I will probly get a different cab mabey a amped 4-10 or a mesa 4-10 to match the 15. Just because of the abuse the poor cab has been through. And I think a ampeg would mesh better than the swr. But It still does mesh quite nice, Im just really picky about bass gear. Drives my guitar player nuts

I would think a 15+2x10 would work better than a 15+4x10. My expectations would be good solid bottom end, and plenty of midrange throw. However, don't expect a hi-fidelity sound from the 400+ like other hi fi tube amps from Demeter and so forth.

Hi:
I have recently bought a 2nd hand mesa 400+ with an ampeg 'svt 1540 he' cabinet (maybe it is not the best combination but the price was really good). I use a fender jazz bass instead of a warwick thumb, and my short and modest experience can say that you can get a good sound (at least I like it as an starting point) pulling out the bright (in the volume control) leaving a flat eq and taking the bass control quite low (this last setting may be due to the litle room there is on the practice space and to the bass itself). I have noticed that the treble control is very sensitive, I mean that a little change on it causes a big change with sound.
I hope this was useful.
P.D: If someone could tell me where to get the owners manual, it would be great. The guy who sold me the amp lied to me and told me he had it but he says he can´t find it now. I have checked the mesa boogie homepage but the manual are just four pages with a summary.

I was at practice the day before our show and had really dead strings on my thumb. I made it sound as good as I could with these lame strings. The day of our show I finally got around to restringing my bass. Was kinda nervous cause was set up with dead strings. It actually sounded nice and warm. The thumb is a really mid range sounding bass and I think the Mesa 400+ cancels it out with a good scoop. It was really dumb luck, I had very good warmth on light attack and a nice growl on more agressive parts to the songs. It was the first time in years since I heard somebody actually comment on how they enjoyed my bass tone .

Hi:
I have recently bought a 2nd hand mesa 400+ with an ampeg 'svt 1540 he' cabinet (maybe it is not the best combination but the price was really good). I use a fender jazz bass instead of a warwick thumb, and my short and modest experience can say that you can get a good sound (at least I like it as an starting point) pulling out the bright (in the volume control) leaving a flat eq and taking the bass control quite low (this last setting may be due to the litle room there is on the practice space and to the bass itself). I have noticed that the treble control is very sensitive, I mean that a little change on it causes a big change with sound.
I hope this was useful.
P.D: If someone could tell me where to get the owners manual, it would be great. The guy who sold me the amp lied to me and told me he had it but he says he can´t find it now. I have checked the mesa boogie homepage but the manual are just four pages with a summary.

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The PDF file that's on the website, believe it or not, IS the owner's manual. Definitely the manual standards were less back in 1982.

As far as I can tell, the number one important thing to remember about your new amp is how the master tone controls work. Unlike many amps where setting the tone knobs all at 5 is "FLAT" the Mesa tone compliment is based upon the old Fender Bassman tone stack. What you need to know about this is:

Bass Knob = 0
Mid Knob =10
Treble Knob=0

That's Flat. From what you can see, from the main tone controls, you can only boost the bass and treble and you can only attenuate the mid. I would start your quest for tone with the above settings and the graphic EQ turned off. From there, adjust the 3 knobs to your liking. I find that I like a bit more treble roll off than I can get with the Treble knob, so I've been using the graphic to roll it off a bit more. But then, I play reggae, so it's no surpise. Normally I'd suggest using the 3 main tone knobs and only using the graphic EQ to adjust your tone to whatever stage or room you're playing in.

Other things to keep in mind:

-Never turn your amp on without a speaker plugged in.
-The 2 preamp channels are different sounding, but you can use them at the same time for a great full fat tone.
-The amp does have a ground switch, but it's tucked away in the chassis.
-The XLR DI is controlled by the master volume knob, and can be pretty hot if you have the amp cranked, have a good direct box around 'in case of' as some cheap soundboards might not be able to handle it. You can use the slave out to a board too.

First of all, i would like to thank you (BurningSkies) for your advice, I didn,t know that the tone controls needed to be set like that to get the "flat" signal.
As I see, you know quite a lot about this, let me just one last question: I have a rack tuner (korg dtr-1000), and I am looking for the best way to connect it. Now I plug the bass into the tuner and I take the signal out to the amplifiers Imput, so I can use the tuner's mute function to check the tuning in parts of songs where I do not play. My question is if the tuner affects the signal significantly or if it is better to use the outputs of the amplifier (slave) and if so, how to use them. Thank you again.

p.d: It is hard to believe that those four pages are the user's manual of such an amplifier.

It's cool. Enjoy your new amp. As far as I can tell, they're the best deal for a high-powered, solid, tube amp on the used market.

I think you're doing just fine putting your tuner through the loop. That's what I do too(Korg DTR-2), and I can't tell a discernable difference in the tone with it set up that way. I almost always use the loop no matter what amp I'm using, and I've used the DTR-2 for about 12 years now without any problem.

I have to thank you for your advice once again. I do not want to bore you with my questions, so I would really be grateful if you could only tell me where I can get more information about the amp. This website has helped me a lot but, the more I learn, the more questions I have.
Nice picture, as far as I see you and your drummer have great gear.

I have to thank you for your advice once again. I do not want to bore you with my questions, so I would really be grateful if you could only tell me where I can get more information about the amp. This website has helped me a lot but, the more I learn, the more questions I have.
Nice picture, as far as I see you and your drummer have great gear.

P.D.: ¿ is it an optical illusion or the bass has diagonal frets ?

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Unfortunately, there's no magical place to find info on this amp. I've carefully searched around here, and gone through every thread that has info about 400+'s, and I've talked to as many people I can find who might know about the amp. Honestly, there's not so much to know...it's a simply built, solid old school tube amp that happens to have a big power section. I bet you could engage Jorg Schroeder about it...he's had one that gigged regularly and he knows his amp...or I also talked with Bob from Eurotubes about mine.

The bass does have non-parallel or Fanned frets...Check it out, go to: